Barcelona Noir

The Law of Escape by Andreu MartÍn

Villa Olímpica

Tino Orté’s father was pinched by the cops while painting No God, No Master, No King on the walls of the Poble Nou cemetery. He had the brush in his hand, ready to dip it into the bucket with the shiny black tar that Gerardo was holding, while Fabregat encouraged them and, supposedly, looked out to make sure they weren’t caught.

But Fabregat was paying much more attention to the actual painting, to the text, to his two friends’ fears, and to hurrying them along, than to the movements in the fog around them. Fabregat was the one who’d recruited the other two to fill the neighborhood of Poble Nou with anarchist slogans: “C’mon, damnit, come with me right now and we’ll make sure that by the time everyone wakes up tomorrow, they’ll be converted to anarchism.” Nobody said no to Fabregat, who always carried a pistol, was part of the union leadership, and boasted of having gotten rid of two bosses the previous month. If anybody said no, he took them for scabs and killed them right then and there.

The police didn’t come with horns and sirens, nor was it a coincidence the three men were caught. They had been looking for Fabregat, because they’d gotten a tip that he’d be there. They approached him stealthily, hidden within the shadows, and then they shouted: “Stop! Police! Hands up!” The bucket of tar spilled on the ground and over the anarchists’ feet as they raised their hands, offering no resistance.

Five uniformed police with rifles and two undercover cops wearing derbies and carrying pistols shoved them against the wall, frisked them, and asked, “Are you the one called Fabregat?” And to the other two they said: “Who are you?”

Tino’s father should have said, Constantino Orté, at God’s and your service, because the priests had taught him humility and life had taught him that the police were Catholic and would never kill another Catholic.

“So, No God, No Master, No King, eh?” an undercover cop said. “You can stop being such a fool and just go.”

Tino’s father and Gerardo thought they’d gotten a pass and smiled gratefully at the benevolence of those officers of the law and went ahead and turned their backs. Fabregat, however, knew what was really up.

“You can go now.”

They’d all heard talk about the Law of Escape, but Gerardo and Tino’s father probably thought it was an urban legend, or that it didn’t apply to them because they’d never been in trouble and that those felled by the bosses’ bullets were probably “up to something.” But Fabregat knew it wasn’t like that. Fabregat knew that twenty-three comrades had already fallen, all shot in the back, since the Law of Escape had been instituted on December 5, 1920.

The police officer repeated, “You can go now,” and Fabregat let out an anguished cry: “The Law of Escape!” And they took off running, their six espadrille-covered feet leaving a trail of black tar footprints on the sidewalks, and then there was galloping, and the sounds of guns cocking, and an endless volley of bullets that shook the neighbors who’d been hiding in the dark on their balconies and looking out at the cemetery.

Tino found out what happened from one of those neighbors who heard, and more precisely saw, everything from one of the balconies. She told him about it at the Poble Nou cemetery, the oldest in Barcelona, on the other side of the wall where his father had been painting, just as the city workers were putting his father’s coffin in the crypt where it would rest forever.

“You’re his son?” the woman asked, full of hate. “I saw what happened.” And then she told him how they were painting No God, No Master, No King and how the police shouted and the tar footprints on the sidewalk detailed the last steps of the three men before the shooting, the red blood spilling over the black tar like a symbol. The anarchists’ flag was black and red.

“Ma’am, please,” was all Tino could manage to say.

He hugged his wife Elena and stepped away from the crypt’s high walls, from the modest bouquet of flowers, from the crowd of indignant workers, from the cemetery, from the wall his father had been painting.

He didn’t want any trouble.

Tino wanted to tear off the worker’s skin that had covered him his whole life. He’d been born in Poble Nou — an area so proud of being proletariat, so poor and dirty, a cauldron of conspiracies and hate — but he’d managed to save up and buy a flashy white car from a member of the bourgeoisie who was afraid to drive, and he’d fled from Poble Nou and taken up residence in Gràcia, also a worker’s neighborhood, but cleaner, more bourgeois. When you went out on the streets, you could greet tidy middle-class people. Neither the bosses’ bullets, which pursued workers in Ciudad Antigua and in their barracks, nor the proletariat’s hunt for impresarios in rich neighborhoods, ever reached Gràcia.

That last day of August, so incredibly hot, a month after his father’s death, Tino was observing the view from his terrace, wearing an undershirt and smoking, maybe thinking about the neighbor who had seen the application of the Law of Escape from her balcony. He lived on the second floor of a building on Venus Street, between Liberty and Danger. The Gràcia neighborhood maintained its ideology in its street names. Even today, just a bit further up, there’s still Fraternity Street, and Progress Street...

The mechanic, Paco the Nut, came walking up the empty and badly lit cobblestone street from the garage where he kept his flamboyant taxi. He screamed, without consideration for the neighbors, who, because of the heat, probably couldn’t sleep anyway: “Tino! Telephone!”

A customer. His number was on a list posted at different taxi stands throughout the city. There were people who preferred to hire private drivers rather than use the big companies or the collectives.

Tino came down to the street and ran to the nearby garage. Paco the Nut and some of his relatives were playing cards, all in undershirts. The receiver was off the hook.

“We’d like to rent a car for tomorrow,” he was told. “We’d like to go to Mataró. Very early. At seven in the morning.”

Mataró is a tiny industrial town on the coast, about twenty-eight kilometers from Barcelona. It was a long trip. At sixty cents a kilometer, he’d earn at least sixteen pesetas, maybe seventeen or eighteen with the tip. A good amount to feed his kids, pay his rent, and put toward the bank loan that had allowed him to buy the taxi and get his license.

“Just come by the corner of Cortes Street and Paseo de Gràcia. We’ll be there. At seven sharp.”

Euphoric, Tino turned to the garage employees: “The car must be ready by six in the morning, spotless, and with a full tank! There’s a big tip in it for you!”

He ran home to celebrate his good luck with his wife.

“Will it be okay?” she asked him, her heart on her sleeve, always a little fearful.

“Of course it’ll be okay.”

“It’s just that you still haven’t transferred the title...”

“I’ve only had the car two weeks. It’s being processed. What do you think will happen?”

The next day, dressed meticulously in his blue uniform with a flat hat and shiny shoes, Tino Orté waited next to his imposing white Studebaker 30 HP, license number 6205, at the intersection of the two majestic streets: Paseo de Gràcia, which is like a museum with the most advanced architecture, but also an arrogant exhibition displayed by the city’s most notable families; and Cortes Street, which today is Gran Vía de les Corts Catalanes, and runs across the whole city, from north to south.

Two men approached him, one wearing a derby and the other a felt hat, both wearing suits, shirts with starched collars and cuffs, and dark ties, like businessmen. They looked very serious, as if their decisions could change the world.

Tino greeted them with his hat in his hand, a bow, and a discrete smile, and didn’t bat an eye when he saw the pistol on one of the men’s belts. Back then, a lot of people carried pistols. For assault or defense, or both. After they made themselves comfortable in the back, he took the wheel.

“To Mataró?” he asked.

“To Mataró,” said the man in the felt hat. Then he instructed Tino on the exact route he should take. “Go around Parc de la Ciutadella to the fish market on Icaria Avenue, then take Taulat Street to the highway toward France, along the seaside.”

Tino might have taken the same route on his own, but the precision of the passenger’s directions disconcerted him nonetheless, because it ushered him inexorably into a world he wanted to leave behind and which he did not like to visit.

They abandoned the wide boulevards, moved past the big modernist park, and immediately found themselves on Icaria Avenue, with its anarchist echoes. Icaria was the name of the utopian society that was founded here by Étienne Cabet, in which all people would be equal and money would not exist — such was his dream. Later, Cabet would go to the United States and make a new Icarian attempt in Nauvoo, Illinois.

Today, in the twenty-first century, Icaria Avenue is a pleasant road with trees and sculptures from that Barcelona which, in 1992, with the Olympic Games in mind, discovered the neighboring Mediterranean. That day, however, it was just the filthy and hectic main street in Catalonian Manchester.

During the First World War, Spain had been neutral and that created an opportunity to provide whatever was needed by both sides. Whatever the war destroyed, Barcelona’s industry would replace. Especially fabric. Fabric for uniforms, for blankets, for tents. But also kegs, chemical and metallurgical products... Factories cropped up by the beach and the first railway in the Spanish state was laid to carry merchandise to nearby ports, where boats were waiting, and from there long trains would transport loads to faraway France.

Catalonian Manchester was what we called that hodgepodge of dirty, arrogant factories, and the little workers’ houses that blossomed around it were called Poble Nou. The factories produced money, a lot of money, for the proprietors, providing huge Spanish-Swiss cars and fur coats and sumptuous feasts with tangos and the Charleston. And also spectacular buildings that are still admired by tourists from all over the world.

They drove alongside the train tracks, between the miserable shacks where dirty, naked children splashed in the mud made toxic by the industrial waste from nearby factories.

“It’s infuriating how these poor people live and how the bourgeoisie live downtown,” said one of the passengers in a shaky voice. “Two worlds, so close and so far away.”

“Shut up, Manuel,” said the other voice.

At the end of Icaria Avenue, there was the oldest cemetery in the city, with a façade that seemed like an homage to the most shameless masonry, with the eyes of God looking out at everything from five meters high, where the walls were washed with tar to cover the messages the authorities considered inappropriate.

They drove past the misery of cardboard and wooden-plank shanties and came upon the misery of dusty yards and what was once Horta’s creek, which today houses the haughty Gotham that is Diagonal Mar, filled with skyscrapers like this city has never seen or wanted to see. Then there was a depressing wasteland of warehouses and train platforms and an artillery barracks with chipped walls, wilted tomato and lettuce plants, and a train crossing.

One of the men in the back placed the barrel of his gun under Tino Orté’s ear.

“Now, go left. Down that road. Toward the woods up there.”

Tino obeyed. Petrified. His mouth dry. It had to happen to him. In this cursed city of bombs, sooner or later, you were hit by shrapnel.

“Don’t be afraid,” the other one said, less aggressively. “We don’t want to hurt you. We’re workers, like you. This isn’t about you. We need money for the Committee for Prisoners.”

They arrived at the edge of the woods. Below them, the Mediterranean light yellowed the landscape.

“There’s Jiménez.”

A man smoked with ease next to the tracks, looking out toward the city of Barcelona.

“Here comes the train.”

The train arrived, spewing smoke every which way, working up an infernal racket. It whistled long, warning the crossing guard to put down the barrier, like he did each day.

“If he doesn’t do anything, it means there’s nothing new.”

“He’s not doing anything. What’s he supposed to do?’

“Take off his hat.”

“Well, he hasn’t taken off his hat, and there’s the train. Run — what are you waiting for?”

The man in the derby leaned against the car window, his pistol still on Tino, watching him with the serene eyes of someone who wishes no harm but is willing to follow through on his threats if he’s obliged to.

The man in the felt hat ran in the direction of the crossing.

The train cars were uncovered and carried five hundred workers toward the future, to build someone else’s future, but they were happy and excited now because it was a payday. The payroll was in a strongbox guarded by two armed men.

The man in the felt hat reached the crossing guard, who was about to comply with his daily routine. Even from afar, Tino could see how he jumped a little when he saw the gun. Then Tino heard: “Quiet! Today the barrier won’t be coming down!” The employee raised his hands and stepped back from the barrier.

The man named Jiménez, who had seemed to be basking in the sun, now fisted a pistol and ran toward the convoy, which was braking with an agonizing screech like the voice of a Greek tragedy’s hired mourner before the disaster. That ferocious machine had the initials M.Z.A. engraved on its side.

Tino thought he glimpsed a man climb on top of the locomotive and then jump down to the cabin. What he couldn’t see were the two men who’d come along disguised as workers in the multitude and who, guns in hand, were trying to scare the others so they’d go away. There was a hell of a commotion, shots, five hundred people trapped and scattering every which way in panic.

The only people who stayed behind, by themselves in one of the uncovered cars, were two armed men next to a trunk that was a meter long and half a meter tall. One already had his hands up, and even from two hundred meters away it was obvious he was shaking with fear and about to lose his balance. The second, however, was unbolting the safety on the Mauser, but not before the other three arrived and fired at him.

He fell like a sack of potatoes. In the distance, Tino thought it looked incredibly easy to kill someone.

One of the men who’d shot the guard, the most animated, dressed all in black and wearing espadrilles, threw the cash box on the ground. The man called Jiménez and the two dressed as workers picked it up. A fourth man jumped from the cabin and joined them.

The locomotive immediately sounded its alarm, but the shots continued, overwhelming the cries from the scattering crowd.

Tino realized then that some soldiers from the nearby artillery barracks were running toward the train and firing with each step. Right then, he felt like an accomplice to the assault and knew he was gambling everything in his life: his savings, his taxi, his family, his apartment in Gràcia.

His hand went to the wheel, he wanted to leave. But he was dissuaded by the man in the derby, with his serene eyes and his pistol.

“Be cool.”

“For the love of God,” Tino whispered.

“Not for the love of God, nor the homeland, nor the king.”

The man in black, carrying the cash box with the guy called Jiménez, dashed toward the car, followed by the man in the felt hat, one of the men disguised as a worker, and the one who’d jumped from the cabin. The soldiers got to the train, climbed aboard, and took aim.

While crossing a patch of grass, the man in black suddenly tripped and fell, taking the cash box and Jiménez with him. The fake worker tried to help him and they all ended up on the ground. The man in the felt hat managed an epileptic leap and kept running. But the guy who’d been in the cabin stopped, turned around, and helped the fallen. The man in black was hurt and limped, and the guy dressed as a worker helped him along. Jiménez ran with difficulty under the weight of the trunk. Clearly confused and ashamed for having fled, the man with the felt hat, who got to the taxi first, demonstrated his impatience with a gesture that was worthless at this point.

The guy who’d jumped from the cabin, who was young and energetic, planted himself among the tomatoes, firing his gun, covering his friends’ escape, until he fell helplessly between the lettuce heads.

By then, the others had reached the taxi and were climbing clumsily inside, five men and a trunk in what was designed for four, and one was hurt and howling. They piled up on each other, freaked out. “Fuck — let’s go already!” And another voice, quavering, asked, “What about El Quero? Where’s El Quero?” And another barked, “Fuck — they killed El Quero!” The treasure chest, metallic and secured with a thick lock, had the distinctive seal of the Aixelá security company.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Follow the creek to the highway to France!”

Tino had already started the poor car. They chugged along on the uneven ground, rocks popping against the Studebaker’s underside, until they reached the highway.

“Turn right! Go back to Barcelona!”

Tino obeyed.

A captain with the civil guard was crossing the street and noticed the white car packed with troublemakers; it was stained with a red liquid, an alarming red like the color of blood.

They quickly guided Tino to Marina Street, where the man in the felt hat got out.

“Take me to María’s house,” moaned the injured man in black.

They continued to the city center, Plaza de Cataluña and its rounds, where the medieval walls used to stand and where the sentries kept watch.

“This way!”

They headed down Cera Street, which for many years had been a gypsy enclave in the city, and then reached Plaza Pedró, which still looks like it did in the ’20s. Those walls, those sidewalks, those corners, those balconies with laundry on the line, all persist as if history was frozen in a static photograph.

That’s where the trip ended. The man in the derby and the man disguised as a worker helped the man in black out of the car. They walked off in the direction of Botella Street.

Jiménez carried the cash box on his shoulder. He didn’t seem too worried that he’d be seen with it. He moved down Carmen Street and turned at the first intersection.

The meter said forty-seven pesetas, which nobody paid.

Tino put the Studebaker in gear, and minutes later he was on Las Ramblas, always noisy, colorful, and jubilant, with its florists, the Boqueria Market, café terraces, and, at the end, Columbus’s statue. Soon, he lost track of time and space.

He realized they’d pushed him into the furious war between the anarchist union, CNT, and the employers’ union, which was called El Libre. But he’d been dragged into the wrong side — while the murders committed by El Libre had impunity, and were supported and protected by Arlegui, the chief of police, and all the powers in the city, Tino was sure that the men who’d assaulted the train would be viciously persecuted and most likely exterminated. And he had been an indispensable accomplice.

He didn’t stop for his noontime meal. He arrived home midafternoon, left the car in Paco the Nut’s garage, and went up to his place where his wife Elena was waiting for him and who started crying immediately when he told her what had happened.

“What will we do?” she asked. “What will we do?”

Tino made a decision. “I’ll go to the police.”

The captain from the civil guard who’d seen the white car and its red stain had immediately contacted the authorities, even before he found out there had been a train robbery.

Before noon, the police were already looking for the vehicle in question. Back then in Barcelona, there were no more than twenty-five thousand cars, most of them domestic. Foreign cars were rare, and American cars even more so, because they demanded a high level of purchasing power. A white Studebaker wasn’t that hard to find. At sunset, when two undercover officers arrived at Paco the Nut’s garage, the engine was still warm and nobody had cleaned the blood off the chassis. The mechanic told them the car belonged to Constantino Orté, who lived on Venus, between Liberty and Danger streets.

When the two inspectors got to his house, Tino Orté was just leaving, dressed in his best suit, and on his way to cooperate with the law.

They detained him.

“We’ll talk down at headquarters,” they told him.

They took him to the sinister building on Via Laietana, headquarters for the Barcelona police since the world began. In those years, it was a commercial avenue, perfumed by sea air. The building was a big black stain which distinguished itself by being set wrong, to the side, so as to break up the street’s straight line.

Police Chief Arlegui came to see him personally. Those who knew the man said he had eyes colored by malice. He was the guy who’d come up with the Law of Escape. He’d planned a couple of attempts on the life of Martínez Anido, the civil governor, just so he could pin it on the anarchists and attack them accordingly.

“Three dead and at least three injured,” he told Tino. “Forty thousand pesetas stolen. The worst act of vandalism ever perpetuated in this city. Do you think we’re going to let you get away with that?”

Tino began to say he had nothing to do with those thieves, but the cops reminded him that his father had been such a dangerous anarchist that he’d been killed while committing a crime against the state. It also struck them as very suspicious that the car wasn’t registered in Tino’s name.

“Did you think that we’d never figure out it was you?” Arlegui laughed. He asked him who his accomplices were. The names Tino had heard during the doomed adventure echoed in his brain: Manuel, Jiménez, El Quero, María.

They beat him.

So he sealed his lips. He was muzzled by an irrational and suicidal fury. He shook his head and turned away when they showed him photos of the suspects. He refused to indentify even El Quero, the one who’d jumped from the machinist’s cabin and then fell dead on the battlefield. He didn’t blink when they showed him a photo of the man in the derby, nor the man in the felt hat, nor the guy called Jiménez, nor the man disguised as a worker, nor the one in black who’d been injured.

At dawn, the cops lost their patience and really let him have it. They broke the fingers on his right hand, they kicked him in the groin. His stubbornness convinced them that he’d voluntarily participated in the assault. When they threw him into a basement cell, his shirt was soaked with blood and his face was disfigured.

Sometime later, the police arrested two men who’d hidden the thieves, and the doctor who’d helped the man in black, and the railroad company employee who’d provided the details for the robbery, but they never found the loot. It’s said that the man in black, who was named Recasens, was tried in France years later on assault charges and guillotined.

They say the money ended up with a guy named Ramón Arín, who chaired the CNT’s Committee for Prisoners.

Tino’s cell door opened and he raised his swollen eyes to the light.

“Get up,” they said. “We’re taking you to the Modelo.”

It was a sad irony that Barcelona’s city jail, where there had been so many horrors, was called Modelo; it pretended to be a model prison and an example for the rest of the world.

They took him out to the street.

Two cops with Mausers.

At that time, because there were very few cars and very few drivers, it was common to transfer prisoners on foot, even across the city, even to the jail on Entenza Street. But it wasn’t very common to step out with the prisoners to busy Via Laietana, because it wasn’t the breeziest image to offer to their illustrious visitors; ordinarily, they’d leave the station from the back, where the narrow streets of the old city awaited them, Ciutat Vella, a dark labyrinth, dirty and empty.

The arrested man in front, the police behind.

And back then, the detainee would sometimes realize he was walking alone. He couldn’t hear the sound of the police boots at his heels.

And he’d stop and look back, all his vital signs on hold, and he’d see that the police were standing back at a certain distance, their Mausers at their hips.

And they’d say, “Go on. You can just go now.”

Brawner’s Shadows by Antonia Cortijos

El Born

It’s been three days since I turned into his shadow. I sleep in the car so I won’t lose track of him. I sleep in fits and starts, always aware of the door to the building.

Around seven o’clock, he steps out on the street and I immediately get out of the car. I follow him from a few meters back so as not to arouse suspicion.

All these sleepless nights are starting to wear on me and I notice that I’m moving slowly. He’s getting too far ahead of me and I need to run to make up the distance. It looks like he’s in a hurry. It’s still dark out, though — they’ve just cleaned the streets and the water is getting in my shoes. My whole body shivers. I raise the collar of my coat and rub my hands to try to scare up some warmth.

He’s nearing the Passeig del Born and, like every day since I met him, he goes in a little tavern at the corner of Calders Street. It’s been open since six o’clock and a lot of the clientele are cab drivers finishing up the night shift and construction workers restoring houses in a neighborhood that’s being rehabilitated. They pick at the walls of the storefronts and homes until the stones show, and then the structure’s soul is exposed. You feel the vibration in your body and it tells the story of a neighborhood that was razed in 1714 by a vengeful king, who ordered the destruction of 1,200 homes so he could build his citadel, a military fort that dominated the city for more than a hundred years. Now, in its place, there’s Parc de la Ciutadella, beautiful, expansive, green.

I wait a few seconds and, protected by the darkness outside, stealthily approach to see how he reads the paper and drinks his coffee. All three days, he’s sat in the same place, away from the rest of the locals. I can’t take my eyes off him, and I continue to contemplate him, the same as yesterday and the day before — the way he addresses the waiter, the small gestures with his elbows barely separated from his body, the wait until the coffee reaches the desired temperature, the pleasure with which he drinks it all at once. He’s borrowed a newspaper that he holds near the coffee and, like every morning, I ask myself if it’s yesterday’s edition.

I breathe the salty fresh air with glee as light beckons dawn and profiles the silhouette of Mercat del Born, the old wholesale market, a modernist steel building that now stands empty and alone, with a sadness that comes from uselessness. It’s easy to get your bearings in this neighborhood, since every street and plaza still echoes with the noises and smells that distinguished each artisanal specialty. The streets are named after them.

When thirty minutes are almost up, I hide in one of the nearby alleys. I know he’ll cross my path at Sombrerers, a narrow street by the Church of Santa María del Mar; where there are now art galleries, wine shops, and restaurants, there used to be, from the Middle Ages until not too long ago, men’s millinery shops. Later we’ll go up Argenteria, where the smiths used to be, working silver, gold, and other precious metals. We’ll move along Via Laietana, the neighborhood’s southern border, until we arrive at the cathedral’s plaza. Then we’ll come to an ancient street, where a car can barely maneuver, and where there’s a bunch of antique shops. I know which one he’ll go in.

This is the time I use to get something to eat, and drink some coffee so the fog will lift from my brain.

Everything started about a week ago.

To me, it feels like an eternity.

The police came to my house to tell me, in a very frosty tone, that my mother had died.

They had found her body in the Botanical Garden at Parc de la Ciutadella, on a bed of white flowers, wearing a soft red silk robe which accented the pallor of her skin. The pose had been carefully constructed to make it seem as if she was enjoying a pleasant nap, and only her head, with abrasions on her neck and covered by a plastic bag, ruined the scene. The autopsy showed that Anna Brawner was already a corpse when she was deposited there, so an investigation was immediately initiated.

Inspector Gómez Triadó interrogated me twice but I couldn’t tell him very much. She’d always been a very strange woman who never gave me access to her secrets: I never knew where she was born; she always claimed to be a citizen of the world. The only time I ever got anything out of her was in my adolescence, when I found out that her mother had died during her birth. But she never told me who my father was, or if he was even still alive.

I had to take care of the body and had it transferred to a funeral home where I held a solitary wake. Seated in front of her, unable to take my eyes off her face, I felt a short circuit in my chest, leaving me in absolute darkness. The connection had corroded, and I know now with absolute certainty that I’d never be without that gloom.

The funeral was the next day. Inspector Gómez Triadó was there, along with two men and a woman I didn’t know.

One was an old man, surely more than ninety, who moved his very stately body with ease. That peculiarity, along with the high-collared, charcoal-colored, tailored suit that pretended to hide the ravages of age, and his immaculate and abundant white hair, gave him an aristocratic and seductive air.

The other man was in his forties, and he dressed and acted in a banal fashion.

The woman was the same age as my mother, but lacked her vitality, her love of life. Her gray eyes, covered in a haze, seemed to be asking for forgiveness.

Inspector Gómez Triadó hurried to take them in for questioning down at the station; it hadn’t even occurred to me that those people could reveal hidden parts of my mother that would help me understand her and myself. I simply accepted their condolences and continued to stare at the luxurious coffin in which she rested.

But something bothered me during the brief funeral. I felt a slight tingling on my neck just as the ceremony was about to end, as if someone’s gaze had been boring into me for a long time. An instinct made me turn my head, but I only glimpsed a shadow going out the door.

Nobody accompanied me to the small cemetery next to the funeral home, so I waited for them to finish preparing the grave and then I put the final touches on the burial rites by myself. I hadn’t been able to cry, but the minute the workers walked away, I gazed at the huge bouquet of flowers on the headstone and tears came in a rush, unstoppable; I had to kneel because my legs couldn’t hold the weight of my body, nor my pain.

When I opened my eyes, there was that shadow again. This time it vanished behind a white marble statue of a guardian angel. I don’t know which part of me reacted, because I was lost in a world of memories. I went to the cemetery exit and waited a few minutes before sneaking back to my mother’s grave. On the way, something made me detour toward the place where I thought the person who’d been watching me was hiding, as if breathing in the same air or walking on the same ground would connect me to him, would reveal his secret. I poked my head out, ever so slowly, from an extended wing, and then I saw him.

Completely overwhelmed, I had to turn away.

My eyes were lying, there was no other explanation.

Incredulous, I looked again and he was still there, erect, as if he were me, as if a mirror was reflecting my image back to me, with my arms crossed over my chest and my eyes fixed on the spot on the tombstone where the Brawner family name was written in gold letters on black marble.

I couldn’t take my eyes off that tall man, his blond hair shining in the midday sun, his skin so white nothing reflected off it; everything had become light. But what caused a lingering, blurry, indefinable fear, what made cold sweat run down my back, was the expression on his face.

I’ve been following him ever since.

“I appreciate that you came right away.”

“Inspector, I’ve always believed that a bitter drink is more difficult to swallow the longer you wait.”

“I’m going to turn on the tape recorder but I need to tell you that you can say no.”

“It’s fine, I’m all yours. My name is Jacob Zimmerman, and I was born in Hamburg, Germany, ninety-two years ago. I’ve been living in Barcelona for fifty-eight years.”

“Why did you attend Anna Brawner’s funeral?”

“Because she was my daughter-in-law.”

“So... are you related in any way to Julián Brawner?”

“Yes, he’s my grandson.”

“I’m surprised. I would have thought you didn’t know each other.”

“Yes, that’s partly true. I’d never spoken with him until today, and I’m pretty sure she never mentioned me to him. It’s an old family story. I decided to immigrate to Barcelona at the end of the 1920s, to escape from the economic crisis in my country. My wife, Edith Keller, had a boutique on the Rambla de Cataluña and I opened an antique store that I still operate. Anna Brawner’s father arrived in Barcelona in 1942 when she was barely three years old. Back then, this city was a nest of spies of many different nationalities, but especially Germans. He was posted to the German consulate, which was then in the Plaza de Cataluña, and you can imagine his mission.”

“Yes, I can.”

“Those were very hard years for everybody. In 1942, I was forty-six years old, I had a stable life and five kids. The youngest was born here and had double citizenship. At the beginning of 1943, the oldest three were kidnapped, all under the auspices of that damned treaty that General Martínez Anido and Himmler signed in ’39. Any German suspected of failing to support the Nazi cause could be detained and repatriated immediately without an extradition hearing or preliminary finding.”

Jacob Zimmerman goes silent, as if he needs his memories to send him the strength to continue. The inspector is about to ask him if he feels all right when the elderly man picks up the conversation again. His voice is charged with a repressed anger.

“They never got to Germany! They were executed somewhere on the French border.”

Silence again. This time, Gómez Triadó just waits.

“My youngest son and Anna Brawner met about twenty years later. They fell in love a few months before her father died, and since she was left all alone, my wife and I asked her to come live with us. They were happy times that made up for the tragedy of the war years. When my son finished his studies at the university, they got married, and before the year was out, she was pregnant. Excuse me... but could I have a glass of water?”

“Forgive my lack of manners. I’ll be right back.”

The old man is left alone. He puts his elbows on the table and rests his face in the palms of his hands. The darkness is soothing. He knows he needs to keep his head clear, his emotions in check. A few minutes later, the inspector is back.

“I brought you some coffee, if you’re interested.”

“No, thank you. At my age, a single cup means a lost night.”

“If you need to rest, we can stop for a few minutes.”

“No, no, I’m fine. The water will do.”

As the old man drinks, Gómez Triadó observes his wrinkled face. As he’s been telling the story, sadness has been darkening his features.

“Everything changed when Julián was nine months old.

For very strong personal reasons, she felt that she couldn’t continue to live with us, and one night she vanished with my grandson. My son couldn’t bear it, and he fell into a state of depression that ended with his suicide. We never heard from her again and then we saw the news article about her murder.

I went to the funeral this morning to tell her how much I’d grown to hate her.”

I decide to sleep at home tonight; I’ve been following him for five days. I need to get some distance or I’ll fall into the looking glass and be unable to come back. Everything is very confusing, as if I am slowly melting into him. He can sense my presence, he sees that I’m following him; I know that he knows because I’m slowly taking over the thoughts his mind generates. They come to me on a breeze that whirls around my brain, full of voices, noise, and hate.

I open the door but I don’t turn on the light; I remember a childhood game of keeping my eyes closed, trying to feel the same sensations as a blind man. The blind have always fascinated me, and blindness is what I fear most, even more than death. Now I want to move in darkness again. I move toward the sink, feeling the walls so I can count the doorways. It’s the third door. I go in. My eyes are getting used to the blackness and begin to make out blurry forms. The first thing I’ll do is shower; I’m still carrying the sweat and dirt of the last five days, plus a thin film of resentment and rage which he has passed on to me.

I thought the water would wash everything away but the only things that are gone from my body are the dirt and sweat.

I try to sleep but my mother haunts me, I feel her near me, caressing my body with a deathly touch which filters into my brain with memories of lost moments and an image that repeats with the regularity of an advertisement stuck in my head. Sleep just turns it on. Darkness is near total, and in the background there’s a thin light which attracts my gaze. I go toward it, passing leafy plants in the shadows at my sides, and I arrive at a small clearing completely covered by a bed of white flowers. It’s from here that the light is emanating. A man with a woman in his arms approaches and when he gets to me, he kneels without seeing me, his eyes red from tears. He puts her down with great care amidst the flowers and the woman looks up at me, her face a mask of agony. I wake up in anguish, the sheets wet from sweat, and dawn’s light is seeping.

I stay quiet, listening for the messages in my dreams, contemplating the dawn through the open window.

“I hope you’re not thinking something’s wrong because my husband and I attended the funeral.”

“Don’t worry,” says Inspector Gómez Triadó, “that’s why you two are here, to clear up that very point. It’s just a formality. How did you find out about her death?”

“It was in the news.”

“If you didn’t actually have much contact with her, how is it that the company you run, Mr. Cánovas — which is owned by your wife — transferred 200,000 pesetas a month to the victim’s account?”

“It was part of my inheritance from my father-in-law, it came with the company.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to stop doing it?”

“The terms of the will were clear: to keep paying until Anna Brawner’s death. And that’s what I came to do, to make sure she was dead.”

“Quite a favor the murderer did you, don’t you think?”

“Us and two other companies.”

“We know, we’ve gone over the victim’s accounts in great detail, Mrs. Cánovas.”

“My name is Teresa Puig-Grau.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Puig-Grau.”

“It’s the same old story. The two other companies are in the same situation. If we didn’t pay what was due on time, first as indicated by the father and then by Anna Brawner herself, she had the legal power to take over our properties. In her defense, I must say that she never exceeded her authority.”

“Are you saying she was blackmailing you?”

“No. What I’m saying is that Anna — actually, it was Otto Brawner — gave us three businesses before Franco could nationalize them during World War II.”

“Could you explain that a bit...?”

“I can tell you what my father told me.”

“Please.”

“We’ve been here since 1942, when Otto Brawner arrived to take over an important post at the German consulate on orders from Kart Resenberg, who was the consul in Barcelona then. Highly confidential official documents about businesses in the city working with Nazi capital passed through his hands. Unlike other German officials, who stayed at the Ritz or the Continental, Otto stayed at my grandfather’s house, I suppose, so that young Anna could be raised in a family environment. The postwar period was very hard and many families had to rent rooms to survive. We felt like we’d won the lottery when Brawner moved in. He brought us coffee, butter, and cans of meat — and he always paid his rent on time. My father was about his age and they got along well. He accompanied him to the get togethers in Colón and to private parties organized at the Ritz. One day, Otto Brawner asked my father if he knew trustworthy people who could act as fronts for three enterprises that Johannes Bernhardt wanted to establish in Barcelona. He consulted with his father, who’d been a lawyer at the Generalitat of Catalonia, and my grandfather told him who Bernhardt was, which made him really reluctant to go ahead with it.”

“Who was it?”

“It was the man who helped Franco win the war, the creator of a formidable economic and business empire that the German government established in Spain which included 350 businesses. In ’36, if I remember correctly, that same German businessman, along with the Spanish captain Arranz Monasterio and other rebel soldiers, forced the pilot of a commercial Lufthansa flight to take them to Berlin, where they met with Hitler. It was Bernhartdt who got those military men ten planes, six fighter-bombers, twenty antiaircraft cannons, machine guns, and munitions, as well as the alliance with Franco that got him whatever he wanted.”

“I’m surprised, I heard rumors but I didn’t believe they were true.”

“Now you understand my father and my grandfather’s reluctance to get involved. But survival was more important then than pride or loyalties, so my father and two cousins acted as fronts for the duration of the war.”

“Incredible! But let’s go back to Anna Brawner. Tell me, Mr. Cánovas, did she ever threaten you in any way?”

“No.”

“Do you know if she ever threatened either of the other two businesses?”

“Not that I know of, but I’d be surprised if she had. Whenever we were going through rough periods, she was the first to relieve us of the responsibility to pay until we were back on our feet.”

Teresa Puig-Grau nods her head before addressing Gómez Triadó. “We both went to the German School, inspector. Anna was my friend until she discovered what her father had done. He was dead but she lived with her in-laws. It had been months since the birth of the twins—”

The inspector interrupts to make sure he heard right. “Excuse me, did you say twins?”

“Yes, identical twins. They weren’t even a year old when Anna discovered, amid her father’s papers, a list of the Jews that her father had turned over to the Gestapo and the SD. The real tragedy was that her husband’s four brothers were on that list. That’s when I saw her for the last time, when she asked me to meet her at the Samoa. She was completely destroyed. Her father was not only a traitor to his race but also the man who’d turned in her in-laws. She decided to disappear. I tried to persuade her, convince her she had nothing to do with any of it, but it was useless. Anna had always been a woman with very particular ideas about morality, about religion. She never spoke about her German origins, or about her Jewish heritage. She had created a lifestyle for herself, in her own way, and she followed its rules obsessively. I couldn’t do a thing. And I never saw her again.”

I know that he killed my mother, our mother. It’s still the dead of night and the rain is trying to wash the air. He walks ahead of me, under an umbrella. He isn’t out for a meal and instead heads directly to La Palla Street, where he tries to hide at Zimmerman Antiquities, the store owned by his grandfather, my grandfather. He flees because he feels accosted. He reads my mind and finds a vengeful anxiety just as I read his for rage and pain. I want him to die the way he killed my mother, his mother. When I arrive, he has lowered the store’s metal door and I know it won’t open again until ten. I make my way to a tiny café with only five bar stools. There’s barely any light, which is probably a tactic to hide the stuff on the floor, which sticks to my shoes, and the greasy gumminess of the bar itself, where I only dare to place my elbows. At first, I’m all alone. I order an expresso with a drop of milk, which I drink in small sips as I contemplate, through the glass, a few folks enveloped in shadows walking hurriedly toward their destinations. Slowly, the pedestrians begin to change and now they’re kids on their way to school, alone or with their mothers. A ray of light cuts through the bar’s window and bits of dust, robbed of their privacy, worry their way to the floor, the furniture, my shoes. My stomach demands solid food and I’m amazed I can still be hungry. I think about my mother and the question hits me again: why did she pick me? I could have been that other one, now tormented, filled with anger toward her and the chosen one. How could she do that? Make a choice! Condemn one of us to live in a world of absences, passed over, cornered, secret.

It’s ten o’clock now. I get up, dropping a fifty-peseta coin on the bar. I wait for my change. When I go out to the street, the sun has completely taken over the alleys between the buildings.

I feel stupid with empty bags in my pocket. I bought them at the gas station yesterday. They’re wide, made of thick plastic, and very manageable. I tremble a little and have to remember my hate in order to regain some strength. I’ve never gone inside the store though I’ve passed it without even a glance; it’s still dark, he hasn’t turned on the lights. When I open the door, a sound like a bell goes off and announces my presence. Then there’s silence. I move inside with short steps, cautious; I have to calm down, every shadow cast by the furniture frightens me; I think of my dead mother to firm up my pulse. I grab one of the plastic bags in my fist. Suddenly, the lights come on and the brightness blinds me. I glimpse the figure of the old man who attended the funeral, my grandfather. He walks by some old cretonne curtains and stands in front of me, quietly, impassive, looking at what I can’t see because I’m hypnotized before him.

The pressure of the plastic on my face and a quick jerk to cut my oxygen make my hands fly to my neck to free myself; I lose a few seconds before realizing all I really have to do is pierce the bag, but I don’t have time to do it, my grandfather immobilizes me, circling me under his arms with the kind of strength produced only by hate or love. As he squeezes, he whispers in my ear a lullaby my mother used to sing: “Mama sings you the loveliest song / you were born at night, like the stars...” I try with all my might to get him off me. “I love you, my son / my sweet light / you’re the prettiest star in the sky.” When I’m just about loose, my brother kicks me and I drop to the ground. Pain races to my head and is transformed into a violent scream full of impotence and rage.

I remain inert and I hear my grandfather cry. There’s barely any air left in my lungs and I can’t distinguish anything through the plastic, just a milky fog that vanishes when I close my eyes.

The Predator by Santiago Roncagliolo

Barri Gòtic

At thirty-nine years of age, Carmen was resigned to her loneliness. She wasn’t pretty but she wasn’t ugly either, and averageness extended to every part of her life: neither rich nor poor, neither dumb nor exceptional. Carmen had such normal attributes — so few attributes — that she blamed her lack of having a partner on her demanding temperament and on luck. Not necessarily bad luck. Just her luck.

It’s also not like she was a spinster or a prude. She’d had partners throughout her adult life. Some were quite pleasant. At the very least, they were steady. Most of her relationships had wasted away over time, and those that survived for several years tended to vanish when it came time to take the next step to marriage or parenthood. It wasn’t, like her mother said with malice, that men refused to get married. It was actually Carmen who could rarely seem to make the commitment beyond six or seven weekends. She understood that she’d rather carry her tedium alone than share it. And if her sheets were cold, she preferred a hot water bottle to a tepid companion as a solution.

Anyway, to fill up her immediate world, she had her officemates. Carmen worked near Comercio Street in a travel agency. The biggest part of her job wasn’t to send people out into the world, but to organize the tourists — each time more numerous — who came to visit Barcelona. In a way, the agency was not a starting point but rather a finish line, the last stop, which was underscored by its physical location: lost in the tangled alleys of Born, boxed into a dead end, under a vaguely ancient archway, practically invisible to the pedestrians; the office seemed like an enchanted cave in a forest.

The advantage in this was that clients tended not to even come to the office, which created a certain closeness among the staff. Carmen’s four colleagues — Dani, Milena, Lucía, and Jaime — had established a warm camaraderie that was respectful of each others’ private lives and allowed them to share their joys while avoiding intimacies. So when Milena’s mother died, they all went to the funeral to be with her. And when Jaime got pneumonia, they all took turns bringing him soup at home. But when Carmen found out she had cysts that were affecting her kidney, she didn’t want to bother anybody with her medical problems. And when her last boyfriend left her — Carmen remembered him well because he really hurt her when he split — she spent days locked in the bathroom crying, but never got it off her chest with her colleagues. She didn’t even tell Daniel, the gay one, with whom she shared the most confidences. Carmen knew she could count on his support for small things but she was afraid that if she asked or needed more, it would cross the delicate line from collegiality to emotional blackmail.

The personal calendar at the office included festive events of which the most important were birthdays. Five times a year, after closing time, the group celebrated one of its members’ birthdays. They would collect money among themselves so they could offer the honored one a significant gift, usually a bottle of fine perfume or cologne. And they blew out the candles on the cake, although since the girls were always on diets, the chocolate cakes had been reduced to muffins and coffee. Each time, these ceremonies included the retelling of the same jokes and, though it wasn’t an orgy of fun, Carmen enjoyed them: she loved the certainty of small everyday rituals which made life easy to manage, free of surprises.

When she turned forty, the day coincided with Barcelona’s Carnival and someone in the office — maybe Lucía, who could be a little over-the-top sometimes — had suggested dressing up in costumes and going out on the streets together, barhopping. Carmen thought Carnival was colorful and she’d been to it several years ago, but simply to watch, dressed as herself, protected by her normality while surrounded by the most extravagant and ugliest masks. She was willing to do it again on those same terms, with a kind of prophylactic barrier between her and the Carnival, smiling at the clever costumes in the same way she would smile at a spectacle on a stage. But the problem, to her dismay, was that the office staff had announced a surprise, which no doubt included a mandatory costume.

Carmen hated all that: surprises, costumes, and what she called “street madness.” They struck her as childish entertainment wholly inappropriate for responsible adults. But to refuse would have meant introducing an element of confrontation to her secure work environment, and she wasn’t willing to risk the stability of her tiny universe. Plus, to be honest, there really was no Plan B for that night. If she said no, she’d have to eat dinner with her mother. And she would do anything, even go out in the streets dressed as a monster, to avoid dining out with her mother on the night of her birthday.

As long as Carmen could remember, her mother had ruined her birthdays. She was a woman with an extroverted personality, who loved parties and party guests, and who always had a house full of people. As a result, she tried to turn each of her daughter’s birthdays into a great social event for kids. She would move all the furniture out of the living room, buy tons of food and drink, and send out invitations every which way, even to girls who weren’t Carmen’s friends or, worse, who were declared enemies. If Carmen protested, her mother responded by saying that there’s no better place to make friends than a party, and that there couldn’t be too terrible a problem between girls her age anyway.

But Carmen — perhaps precisely as a response to all that — was a retiring and timid girl who would hide out in a corner while the other girls had fun and her mother bantered with the adults. Sometimes, while she tried to make herself invisible, she went from being a hostess to being her guests’ victim. When the more seasoned girls would realize that she wasn’t reacting to any of their verbal provocations, they’d come up with other ways to torment her: they pulled her braids; they shoved her; they laughed at her; they stuck jelly candies on her clothes; they stole her gifts. And later, when her mother approached them, they would pretend that everything was fine and force Carmen to smile and pretend as well. Of course, the first few times Carmen tried to tell her mother, but she just said, “Dear, you have to learn to relax. Your friends are only playing.” With those words, she forced her to play as well. She told Carmen she had to learn to get along.

Since the human world was hostile, Carmen would take refuge in the toy world, especially the world of stuffed animals, which she loved. Her collection included a bear with button eyes, a zebra, a very fat cat, and a cow with a fat pink udder, among many that hung from her walls and filled her closet. Carmen treated these toys like friends. She’d gather them in a circle in the middle of her room and pretend to have tea. She’d let them decide what they wanted to play. She slept with them, and when there were too many to fit with her under the sheets, she’d give them her bed and sleep on the rug. They deserved it; at least they deserved it more than people.

Her favorite was a dark brown little wolf her father had brought her from Germany. She called him Max. When her mother once asked where she’d gotten such a name, Carmen replied, “That’s what he wants to be called.”

In fact, sometimes it seemed that Max the wolf had his own life, and he’d pop up in the most unexpected places: in the kitchen knife drawer, under her parents’ bed, in the tub. At the same time, Carmen seemed to have a lot less of a presence. When she got home from school, she’d lock herself in her room with her stuffed animals and would have to be dragged out for dinner. When there were visitors, even children, Carmen would hide under the bed with her stuffed animals. As each day passed, she seemed to communicate more and more exclusively with them, delegating the role of spy in the outside world to Max.

If she had to communicate with adults, Carmen would do so representing the stuffed animals. She didn’t ask for chocolates for herself, saying instead, “Max wants some.” If she didn’t want to go see her grandmother, she’d offer that the bear or cow was sick as an excuse. (The wolf was the only one with a proper name but he never got sick.) Even in her letters to the Three Wisemen, she only asked for gifts for her stuffed animals. The one she wrote when she was nine years old went like this:

Her mother was really upset by that letter. For her, there was nothing worse than being condemned to isolation, and the girl was bringing it upon herself. To try and combat it, she took Carmen on excursions to Costa Brava, the volcano at Olot, the steam baths at Montbui. She would add other kids to the trips, as many as possible, until she filled up the family car. When they got to each place, she’d let them out, like a pack of hounds, so they could run all over the grass and hunt bugs — basically, so they could show off that they were full of life. But it was useless when it came to Carmen. The girl behaved with a proper but distant chilliness. She obeyed orders but participated in the games without complaints or enthusiasm, as if she were tackling a school assignment that wasn’t too difficult. And she did this with her mind elsewhere — undoubtedly in her closet full of toys.

For her tenth birthday, her mother decided to try to use shock therapy. She organized the biggest party ever. She rented a local games place for kids and invited more than fifty people, quite a feat considering how few friends her daughter had. She bought the girl a pink dress and spent days teaching her how to look sociable and happy.

The day of the party, Carmen spent all morning consulting her stuffed animals about what to do. She’d gotten so enmeshed with them that their games were real meetings, with debates and turns to speak. That morning, a few of the animals suggested she get ill. Others, Max among them, advised straightforward insubordination: a refusal to attend.

But Carmen couldn’t do that to her mother. She’d seen her running around from one thing to another in preparation for days and knew how much this party meant to her. Besides, Carmen had developed a kind of protective shield that allowed her to function in the outside world in exchange for returning safely to hers, and she didn’t mind using it when necessary. Frankly, that was the safest bet because it guaranteed that, as long as she knew how to behave, nothing would change between her stuffed animals and her. So, against her toys’ wishes, she opted for the most diplomatic solution: she’d go to the party, then come back to her stuffed animal world, to hibernate until her next birthday.

The biggest surprise was that she actually liked the party. Busy with the trampolines and the rides, her guests didn’t torment her, and she was able to get over her fears and play some of the games too. Aware of her love of stuffed animals, and unaware of her mother’s worries, a few of the guests had given her stuffed animals as gifts: dogs, monkeys, chickens, deer. But, for once, Carmen was more interested in people and was able to have fun with them. That night, she came home with her heart swooning over her discovery of parties and her reconciliation with the world.

But when she went to tell her stuffed animals, they were no longer in her room.

Or in her closet.

Or under her bed.

Carmen looked all over the house. She rummaged through boxes. Peeked under rugs. Called aloud for each of her stuffed animals, especially for Max. Finally, fearing the response she already knew, she asked her mother what had happened to her friends. That’s what she called them, friends, as tears rolled down her cheeks. And her mother’s words hit her like anvils hurled down from the sky.

“You’re too big for such things, dear. It’s time you found other pastimes.”

The day she turned forty, Carmen opened her eyes ten minutes before the alarm and let time ease by until the moment to get up. When she was getting dressed before the mirror, she realized that wrinkles were starting to show on her neck, her armpits, and between her breasts. She felt as though her body came with an expiration date. To celebrate the passage of time with joy struck her as a supremely tasteless custom.

As the day went on, her colleagues behaved with studious normality, which only made Carmen more nervous. Every now and again they exchanged complicit looks amongst themselves and she was tempted to pretend she was getting a chill and just go home for the day. In the afternoon, a client approached to wish her a happy birthday and winked at her. Carmen felt as if the whole city knew, as if she were walking the streets with a sign on her forehead that said: Today I’m a year older.

After doing the day’s accounting and closing up shop, Jaime and Daniel turned off the lights and came out of the back room with the traditional muffin which was, in fact, Carmen’s favorite: apple and cinnamon. It had two candles stuck in it, shaped like a 4 and a 0, which tenuously lit the scene while her friends sang “Happy Birthday.” Carmen wished that everything would end right then and there and blew out the candles. But she knew the muffin would not grant her wish.

Due to the upcoming Holy Week holiday, they’d closed late, so they could simply change clothes and begin their noche loca, as Daniel had been saying with the heaviest gay accent he could muster. Then, the moment Carmen had been fearing finally arrived with a ta-daaa to spice up the occasion. Milena and Lucía presented her with her costume, the irrefutable evidence that there was no going back, that she’d spend the evening dressed as someone else, surrounded by faceless people.

The costume wasn’t even original. Worse yet, it was the most common of all: the prostitute. “A hooker!” Daniel squealed. It included platform shoes and high multicolored hose, a leather miniskirt, and a black top, which left broad swatches of skin out in the open. The good part was that, at least out on the street, she’d have to wear a coat. The bad part was the rest of it.

Her friends were prodigiously inventive and, without exception, were all better costumed. Each one took his or her turn going in the bathroom and, upon coming back out in costume, received applause and jocular comments from the others. Daniel wore a tunic and laurels like Caligula, and Jaime was going goth, with a nail-studded collar and leather accessories. Milena was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. Lucía was a cop. Carmen tried to maintain her composure but had the sensation that everything was happening a million light-years away from her.

When they went out, they encountered vampires and astronauts parading down the neighborhood streets and tunnels. An imp and a witch stood in front of the wig store on Princesa Street comparing false noses. At the Plaza del Ángel, dogs and rats streamed out from the metro station. In the first few minutes, the five office workers felt a ticklish nervousness about their costumes, which Daniel tried to relieve with sex jokes. By the time they got to the Santa Caterina market, however, they felt much more comfortable in their new skins, which blurred under the multicolored tile roofs and the surreal atmosphere created by the other pedestrians. When they crossed Vía Laietana, a giraffe’s long neck could be seen against the background of the buildings they approached. Carmen felt slight relief that her hussy attire was pretty conservative after all.

The Cathedral’s esplanade confirmed this impression. Gargoyles that looked like they had just scaled down from the walls strolled by tourists and uncostumed pedestrians. In order not to get lost in the narrow alleys of the Barri Gòtic, Carmen and her friends followed Daniel’s tunic single file to a bar. Once inside, maybe because of how anxious she felt walking down the streets dressed like that, Carmen relaxed a little, as if she’d arrived at a familiar, even cozy place.

The bar was decorated like a catacomb and the air was so thick with smoke that the guests looked like specters in the fog. Carmen asked for a double shot of whiskey. She didn’t usually drink, but she also didn’t know how to face a situation like this, and though Lucía was playing around with her handcuffs and everything seemed fun, she needed something to help her along.

“The bad part about Carnival,” Milena said, “is that you could hook up with an ugly guy without even realizing it.”

“No,” responded Jamie, “the best part is that you can hook up even if you’re ugly. This is a much appreciated day for thousands of people...”

Everyone had to practically scream to be heard. And half the conversation didn’t even reach Carmen’s ears, though she smiled so as not to seem out of it. She wanted to go to the bathroom but there was a mass of humans in the way. She tried but didn’t get very far.

“Sweetie, you’re getting looks,” Daniel whispered in her ear.

At the bar, a wolfman had just ordered a drink. His body was covered with hair and his furry tail wagged from side to side.

“He wasn’t looking at me,” Carmen replied.

“Sweetie, believe me. I know when a man looks at somebody. Even if it’s not at me.”

Somebody ordered another round and another drink ended up in Carmen’s hand. The friends toasted and laughed, although Carmen didn’t really understand what was going on. The wolfman was now closer to them and was suddenly speaking with Daniel. And soon with the others as well.

“You have a very good costume,” Carmen said, just to say something. “You look like a real wolf.”

“I am a real wolf,” he responded.

And she laughed.

“Your costume is very good too. It’s... inciting.”

“I hate it.”

Before she realized it, she’d embarked on a conversation with the wolfman. When she couldn’t hear what he said, she simply admired the costume’s perfection. She couldn’t find the zippers or the seams, and the mask fit his face perfectly.

After a while, Milena asked: “Shall we go somewhere else?”

Almost automatically, they all began to push toward the exit. When they reached the door, Carmen noticed a bear wearing a scarf drinking in the back of the bar. It seemed to her that his eyes were like two buttons.

When they got out into the fresh air, Carmen realized she was slightly tipsy and the wolfman — by that point he’d identified himself as Fran — offered her a hairy arm, which felt like real fur to the touch. They lingered in a mob of skulls.

When they turned a corner full of bows and crosspieces, Carmen bumped into a Che Guevara, who laughed uproariously. There was a metal camera in the plaza in front of them that watched her with its single lens. It took Carmen a few seconds to grasp that it was a monument dedicated to someone or something.

“Where are we?” she asked her companion.

“It’s this way.”

They crossed a plaza bordered by columns, with a fountain in the middle, and palm trees. Carmen recognized Plaza Real, but it looked different. Maybe it was the people perched on the windows, who seemed to watch her in silence. When they got to Las Ramblas, Carmen realized she’d lost track of her friends.

“I swear they were right here,” Fran said.

Then, and only then, did Carmen understand the true nature of her birthday surprise, a surprise that had Daniel’s typical imprimatur and, maybe because of the warmth of the liquor, didn’t bother her so much: it was a hairy gift, with big fangs, named Fran.

“Do you want to go to another bar?”

Carmen noticed how tall Fran was. She looked at him from below, with his profile silhouetted by the full moon. She smiled. A woman dressed as a cow with a giant pink udder walked by her, too drunk not to stumble into her.

Dear, you have to learn to relax.

They crossed Las Ramblas and went into El Raval. They passed by a kind of ancient jail with bars on the windows. Carmen thought she heard a scream coming from inside but when she turned, she saw only a man disguised as a cat with a very thick costume. Fran didn’t bat an eye. He’d bought a beer from a Chinese street peddler and he offered her a drink. Carmen accepted. As they went on, the multitudes dispersed and some streets were completely empty. Further on, Carmen realized that people weren’t dressed up as Moroccans. These were real Moroccans, and a few of them whistled at her when she walked by. The air smelled of kebabs and beer. On a corner, some graffiti demanded: KILL THEM ALL.

Fran came to a halt at a storefront with a locked gate.

“Damn,” he said, “I didn’t think it’d be closed today of all days.”

“I’m cold,” Carmen complained, feeling the air crawl in under her multicolored hose.

Without a word, Fran led her to a tiny street that emptied out to an intricate network of passageways. They entered the labyrinth and arrived at a building so narrow it couldn’t accommodate an elevator. While they climbed the cramped stairwell, Fran mumbled something about his place and led her to believe he had liquor there. Carmen continued on, more because she was cold than because she wanted to. She felt heavy and clumsy, and she just wanted a couch to fall into.

And a girl wolf for Max because he’d like to have little wolves, thank you.

Fran’s place proved surprisingly big considering the narrow stairs. It had a single hallway which extended to a central patio, while the rooms were off to the sides. The living room was just an extension of the hallway, which seemed endless. Carmen curled up in an armchair and accepted the brandy her host offered. When she brought the glass to her lips, she felt the warm and thick beverage, like a Turkish coffee.

“Fran, do you know you remind me of someone?”

“Really?”

“Can I call you Max?”

“You can call me whatever you want.”

A thud, like a knock, came from somewhere in the hall, but Fran didn’t seem to be aware of it. Carmen’s feet were cold and she drank a little more. With each swallow, Fran would refill her glass with that liquid which seemed to her less and less like brandy. The room was spinning and she thought she heard voices other than her own, but she had a hard time figuring out if they were coming from inside or outside her head. Fran kept his costume on. The hair looked so natural. It was like sitting next to a giant dog.

“Max, why don’t you take off your mask? I still haven’t seen your face.”

“You want me to take it off?”

Carmen nodded.

“You might not like what you see,” he said, and she thought she saw a smile on his snout.

“Take it off.”

He put his hands on his neck and struggled a little, as if he was having trouble finding the zipper. Carmen was seeing double and her eyes wanted to close but the anticipation kept them open. Finally, the wolf’s face gave way. First, it went lax on his features, then absolutely amorphous. Fran grabbed it by the sides and pushed up. When the mask finally fell away, Carmen saw the face underneath. It was her mother’s face. And now it was her voice, with thundering clarity, which seemed to come from every corner of the room.

“You’re too big for such things, dear. It’s time you found other pastimes.”

In the next instant, Carmen saw only the open fangs coming toward her face. And darkness.

Carmen opened her eyes ten minutes before the alarm and let time ease by until the moment to get up. At first, it took her a few seconds to realize she was at home. Later, she tried to remember how she’d gotten back, but couldn’t. She managed to believe momentarily that she hadn’t gone out the night before, but her costume — that horrible costume — was thrown on the floor, like an annoying witness. She got up and shoved it under the bed with her foot. She wanted to forget she’d turned forty. That she’d ever had a birthday. The only thing that’s really real, she told herself, is what happens in front of other people.

She was comforted knowing that nobody at work would ask her about anything. She had that kind of relationship with her officemates: respectful when it came to intimacy. She could decree that they’d never had a celebration with apple cinnamon muffins. Maybe the others wouldn’t even remember it. Maybe they hadn’t even taken note of yesterday and were just waiting for her today with a hooker costume, ready to go enjoy Carnival. When she undressed before the mirror, she realized that wrinkles were starting to show on her neck, her armpits, and between her breasts. She felt as though her body came with an expiration date. To celebrate the passage of time with joy struck her as a supremely tasteless custom.

The Enigma of Her Voice by Isabel Franc

Poble Nou

The clerk was surprised I wasn’t familiar with the story. “Everyone in the neighborhood knows about it,” she said, practically scolding me. I had recently moved into a very small apartment on Amistat Street that served as both living space and office for me. Since arriving in Poble Nou, I’d tried to gain the confidence of folks out in the streets, store owners and porters, if there are any (there are so few left); you never know when you’re going to need information. I was curious about the name of the place, so I had decided to ask about it as a conversation starter.

“In 1957, a customer gave a parrot to the owners of La Licorería, the Farreras family. He had brought it from Guinea. It was a very likeable parrot, but a bit of a rascal. Streetcar 36 began and ended its route right here in front of the store. The conductor and the ticket collector would come in for coffee until the inspector blew his whistle to give the streetcar the go-ahead. For a time, the whistle blew quite abruptly; the conductor and the collector would have to rush through their coffee and leave without paying to get back to streetcar 36 and take off, while the inspector would get annoyed that they’d left without him giving the official order. It took a while for them to discover that it was the parrot whistling. Its imitation was so perfect, and caused so much confusion, that the streetcar supervisor forced the store’s owners to keep the bird inside.”

“That poor parrot!” I exclaimed.

“Oh shush! It had such a mouth! And don’t think it died of sadness, no ma’am: it lived until 1992, the year of the Olympics. It’s embalmed in its cage, right in La Licorería. You can stop by and see it if you’d like.”

As I was leaving the shop, I turned around to look at the lettering on the entrance: El Lloro del 36 (The Parrot of 36). The shop doesn’t exist anymore, just La Licorería; after Mr. Farreras’s death, the women of the family rented the storefront and ended up closing it after a bit. They complained that it was too much to handle. Later, I stopped in to see the story’s protagonist. It was a gray parrot, pretty big, with a mischevious face. They’d put a little hat on its head that looked like the inspector’s, and a whistle hung around its neck.

There was also another story involving the parrot that nobody liked to mention: Twenty years ago, on a Sunday morning around breakfast time, with the store packed with customers, a man with a hunting rifle came in, walked toward the bar, and, without a word, unloaded two shots point blank in the stomach of a customer who had been peacefully drinking the house vermouth. The parrot must have been traumatized: first, being shut in, and then this event. I imagine that its larynx would have dedicated itself to brilliantly mimicking the two shots and terrifying the neighborhood. And I say I imagine because this wasn’t anything the clerk told me; it was kind of taboo, as I discovered along the way, and it also led me to my first case.

I returned to my office thinking about the parrot.

Since I left the department — the police department, and the only job I’ve ever quit (all the others have asked me to leave) — my detective business has been my sole means of support. It didn’t occur to me to do anything else; I don’t know how to do anything else. At first, I thought of starting a GLBT-friendly agency. Since the passage of the same-sex marriage laws, a new market niche has opened up and specialization always guarantees a steady clientele. It’s the usual: inheritance hassles, infidelity, divorce... With so much desire to go mainstream, they behave in every way like traditional couples. But I also feared that specialization might close some doors, and my priority is eating. I decided not to promote myself explicitly on my business card or on the door, but I did send out information to all the gay hangouts and organizations, web pages, and businesses, as well as all the neighborhood shops and strategic locations such as the courts, the unemployment office, and the bingo palace. G&R Detectives uses the initials of both my last names. But this way it makes it look like there are at least two of us.

That morning, after chatting with the clerk at El Lloro del 36, I got my first case. Around eleven-thirty, I received a call from a woman wanting my services; her voice was so sensual, it gave me goose bumps. It was certainly an intriguing voice. Since my office was a mess and something told me this potential client came from a good family, I decided to meet her elsewhere.

“If it sounds good to you, we can meet in a half hour in the patio at El Tío Che, in front of the Alianza Casino. I’ll be carrying a copy of El País.”

Without a doubt, El Tío Che had the best Cuban milkshakes around, creamy and with lots of cinnamon. The real Tío Che was originally from Valencia and passed through Barcelona on his way to America, but he missed the boat, and while waiting to catch the next one, he began selling his concoction. His shakes became so popular that he decided to stay in Poble Nou. On one of those afternoons when I was just hanging out in the neighborhood, the owner went on and on about it.

I was sucking on the slender sugarcane, forcing the sweet liquid into my mouth, when I saw a riot of curls, more fanning out than falling, and a huge pair of sunglasses in the middle. That couldn’t be her, I thought, and then I watched — the little piece of cane stuck on my lip — as she walked directly toward me. An enigmatic face, with an overall feline aspect. Beautiful and tall. Like she’d just stepped out of a Botticelli.

What Diana Gallard needed seemed simple: she wanted me to protect a woman from a possible threat. Twenty years ago, this woman’s husband had discovered she had a lover, had gone to look for him, and then shot him twice in front of a good number of people and a foul-mouthed parrot. Now he was getting out of jail, and the woman’s niece — that is, this riot of curls — was afraid he would come for her. It was a well-founded suspicion, given the man had lost half his life due to that infidelity.

“Give me more details,” I said.

“My aunt’s husband was very jealous, and he’d already spent a good deal of time following her movements. Every afternoon, she’d go to a little house on Fernando Poo Street, where a couple, who they were both friends with, used to live. I think he also found some of her love letters and poems. One Sunday morning, he got his hunting rifle, went to La Licorería on Taulat Street, and... you know the rest.”

La Licorería on Taulat Street, of course, I thought at once, but I was less struck by the coincidence than by the fact that the clerk had so quickly shared the story about the streetcar while keeping mum about this one. In any event, the story had finally reached me, and I needed to decide now whether I was going to deal with it or not. It was more of a case for a bodyguard than a detective. Still, I didn’t think I could say no to my first case and, to be honest, I thought it would be stupendous to work for so fantastic a woman.

“So it’s just keeping an eye on her?” I asked to confirm. “I only say this because sometimes I have very complicated cases and every once in a while it’s good to get a simple one.”

I had to make her think the agency worked at full tilt, and the truth is when I was on the force I did have very complicated cases.

I think it was when she responded that I noticed something for the first time. “Yes, just watch her,” she said in a very low voice, so much so that I understood it only because of the body language that went with it. Of course, I didn’t give it any importance then.

Before heading back to the office, I decided to take a walk along the seafront, between the beaches of Bogatell and Mar Bella. A stroll by the ocean always helps me concentrate, going over the facts in my head and coming up with a strategy. I ended up at Chiringuito del Moncho’s and decided to have some chipirones and patatas bravas.

Diana Gallard had insisted she didn’t want me to do anything about the man, just to keep my eye on the woman. “Don’t lose sight of her,” she’d pressed. And her voice was so quiet this time, I had to ask her to repeat it. And her insistence bothered me. I don’t like to take orders, and when it comes to my cases, I like to figure out the tactics myself. But keeping in mind that I didn’t want to get too tied up, and that I wanted to keep my client happy, I decided to follow her instructions. Although I didn’t simply give in either. I called my friend and former assistant, Dos Emes (Two Ms — a pseudonym I gave her out of discretion, because she was still on the force), and asked her for details about the incident from twenty years ago.

“I’ll look up the files,” she assured me.

The next day, I posted myself in front of one of the buildings on Paseo Calvell at eight in the morning — it was the second building just off La Rambla de Poble Nou. At nine-thirty I went up to see the woman I was protecting, armed with a solid excuse.

“Good morning, ma’am. Acoustic inspection.”

When you enter a home early in the morning, you usually find the wife in a robe or wearing an apron. But this woman was dressed to leave and was even lightly made up. She was in her late sixties and in good shape, though her expression was a little hostile.

She was suspicious from the go but I was convincing: “We’re testing the levels of noise pollution in the neighborhood.” I showed her a multiuse ID which I’d made myself. “If the noise in your home is greater than sixty-five decibels, the city has resources to assist with soundproofing. You know... double-glazed windows, cork reinforcement for the walls. May I come in to measure the sound?”

My purpose was simple: to see the woman up close so I’d recognize her and be able to follow her, and to get any kind of clue about her life. I also wanted to gain her trust, just in case I had to intervene later. A city inspector roaming the neighborhood can pop up anywhere without raising questions.

I pulled a walkie-talkie out of my bag and went through the whole apartment, focusing it this way and that, making it emit occasional sounds. It was a small apartment, probably no more than fifty square meters, with two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and bathroom; each room was miniscule. The terrace was square and overlooked the sea.

“You’ve done well since the cleanup, haven’t you?” I said, trying to connect with her. “Have you lived here long?”

“All my life,” she answered drily.

I knew those apartments had been built in the ’50s by the city’s housing department. Back then, Mar Bella beach was full of outdoor bars and, when the weather was pleasant, the neighborhood residents would gather there. But little by little, the space between the kiosks and the train tracks was taken over by little shanties that were washed out to sea on more than one occasion. During the next few decades, the beach became a great dump, with equal parts garbage and seashells. It was a black-and-white landscape in which only flames from the burning trash could be distinguished. It was the perfect place for metal scavengers, the homeless, and lonesome souls. The human and urban panorama eventually changed the way it always has in this city: with an extraordinary event. The ’92 Olympic games brought color back to the neighborhood. It was completely transformed. Where factories had idled, parks and luxury apartments were built; some were turned into civic centers, like Can Felipa. They buried the tracks, cleaned the beaches, and built a sea walk; the day they opened La Rambla down to the water, people came down in a mad rush, like a procession, as if the way to illumination had been revealed. What had been a nest of shanties facing a gray ocean and isolated by the train tracks became a high-end neighborhood. And the modest building in which this woman had lived her entire life quintupled in value.

The interior of the home, however, did not appear to have gone through any modifications and still had the rancid air of the ’60s; there was a deer scene overlooking the dining room, flowered wallpaper, faded tiles, and Formica furniture in the kitchen... as if time had stood still. There were also several ancient photos, but none showed a masculine presence that might be her jailed husband. I wasn’t surprised.

The inspection completed, I said goodbye to the woman, headed out to the stairwell, and went up the last leg to the roof where I found the perfect watchtower. I pulled out a book, something light, and began to read: The Intersection of Law and Desire by J.M. Redmann.

Midmorning, the elevator stopped on the top floor and someone knocked on the door of the woman I was protecting. She was approximately the same age, and was dressed very simply in dark slacks and a linen jacket; she had gray-streaked hair that had been styled at a beauty salon. She went in and neither of them reemerged until the first hour of evening. I began to think this was going to be a very dull case.

At around four-thirty, a little after the end of the afterlunch soap on the Catalan network, they finally left the apartment. They strolled down La Rambla casually, arm in arm, looking like widows of a certain age who keep each other company. I followed them to El Surtidor bakery, well known for its coca de forner bread. During the stroll, they’d greeted several people along the way with a slight nod of the head and a cursory “buenas tardes.” Soon they emerged from the bakery with pieces of coca de forner in their hands and I watched as they retraced their route until they got to the first rotunda, where they said goodbye with kisses on both cheeks. My protected woman did not go out again.

Yes, yes, a real simple case. And better yet: the next day, case closed. The woman’s husband, the ex-convict who’d done time for the murder of her lover, had fallen to the Ronda del Litoral from one of the pedestrian bridges and thus ended his miserable life. Good thing he threw himself, I thought, because if it had been the woman I was protecting who’d pushed him, who knows what kind of future I would have had.

When I got the check from Mrs. Gallard, I told myself it wasn’t bad at all for my first case, although I was a little sorry about such a hasty ending, especially because I wouldn’t have any more contact with her.

“It’s a shame what happened, but now there’s nothing to fear,” I said.

“No, no, no — it isn’t a shame,” she replied.

“Excuse me?” Once more her voice was so tenuous I could barely hear her. I remember I got a little worried: maybe my ears were stuffed up.

“He was a despot,” she said. “He would have gone after her for sure.”

The patio at the Catamarán was quiet at that hour of the morning. A group of tourists strolled along the beach, and on the path, cyclists and runners crossed each other in opposite directions. It was a sunny day, windless, the sea as calm as a lake, and there was that woman who provoked a flurry of emotions whenever she was in front of me. She was intense, out of reach, and she wrapped me up in a fog. And she was imperfect: her nose was too big, her mouth too straight. That’s what made her truly beautiful. I thought it was a real tragedy to never see her again.

“You don’t need me anymore,” I said, with just the slightest tone of disappointment.

She responded with a firm “No,” and blinked behind her dark glasses while her long hands showed off three rings, one an antique, and a finger touched the edge of the glass in which the ice from a martini was slowly melting.

The ex-convict’s accidental death seemed straightforward. Apparently, he was blind drunk as he headed to the Ronda, so he probably slipped. It had been eleven o’clock at night, when there’s scarcely a soul around. There were no witnesses. He fell like a sack and was run over by a truck. Still, the idea of suicide, or less likely, that someone had pushed him, hadn’t been entirely ruled out. The police completed the task of investigating without too much fanfare. Obviously, they interrogated the widow: if there was a possible suspect, it was her, but she had an alibi, and a very good one; I actually corroborated it. After a few days, it was confirmed that it had been an accidental death and that was that, case closed.

But I resisted the idea of having to stop seeing such an extraordinary woman. I guess I could say that my bloodhound instincts made me think something was off, that if it was a puzzle, it had missing pieces; I knew from my time on the force that all cases are like puzzles. But that wasn’t what brought me back on the case. I was crazy to see her again, to reveal the enigma in her sensuous voice, to ask her to dinner, and... well, to shamelessly throw myself at her. Yet I hadn’t found an excuse to see her until Dos Emes pointed out an important detail: the companion of the woman I was protecting, the lady from the afternoon prior to the ex-convict’s death, was the widow of the man killed twenty years earlier in La Licorería.

“I was going over the file to get information for you when I noticed the coincidence,” explained Dos Emes. “Everything happened so quickly I didn’t have a chance to tell you before. To be honest with you, this death smells fishy.”

“Fishy! Fishy!” I was furious. “What’s the connection? The two women must have become friends after the tragedy.”

“But, boss, doesn’t it strike you as weird?” Even though I’m not her supervisor anymore, she’s continued to call me boss. “Would you become friends with the woman who was your husband’s lover, whose husband was killed by your husband?”

“What a mess!” I said. “But I don’t know. For starters, I don’t have a husband...” At that moment I realized I had the perfect excuse to see Diana Gallard again. “You’re right,” I added very quickly. “I’ll call my client and ask her to clear up a couple of murky points about the case.”

Late that afternoon, we met at the casino; this time I thought it was important to meet in a quiet place.

“What’s there to clear up?” she asked, trying to mask her evident irritation.

“Did you know your aunt and her lover’s widow are friends?”

Her voice changed again. “What’s so strange about that?”

“Girl, you don’t become friends with the woman who rolled around with your husband — the husband later killed by her husband!”

“Perhaps grief brought them together.”

“What was that?”

“That maybe grief brought them together,” she repeated, a little forcefully.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

I have to confess, I really didn’t want to work this angle. For me, the case was closed. Dos Emes is finicky, and the more I looked at Diana Gallard, the more I was attracted to her. That’s why I soon changed the conversation and invited her to dinner at the best restaurant in the neighborhood.

“Do you know Els Pescadors?” It’s an old-style bar with a kitchen, which has done very well thanks to a group of famous theater people, and has been turned into a fancy eatery on a charming plaza untouched by time, with three beautiful bella ombres trees for shade. “It’s got the freshest fish in town, artfully cooked... By now you must know the quality of Catalonian cuisine.”

I don’t know why she accepted. The easiest thing would have been to disappear; I’ve always wondered if that was part of her strategy. After all, what could Diana Gallard see in me but a nobody who thinks of herself as a Miss Marple. You have your complexes, and at a certain age you know your possibilities and your limits — which doesn’t mean that every now and then I don’t get carried away by naïve dreams. In any case, the truth is that I very much enjoyed the dinner. We talked about her life and mine, what we liked, and though she was somewhat restrained, I got the feeling she had a good time. I think if that hadn’t been for the case, she probably wouldn’t have let slip a confession.

“I’ve lived in Florence since I was very little and the woman you protected isn’t my aunt but my mother.”

“Good god! Then the deceased... I’m so sorry.”

“My mother sent me to Italy to live with her sister so that I’d be free of him.”

“And when they jailed him, why didn’t you come back?”

“I was an adolescent and it’s not good for a kid to have her father in jail for murder.”

I understood that, just as I understood why she wouldn’t feel any special affection for her real father.

“My parents are in Italy,” she said. “I’ve always stayed in contact with my biological mother. She’s been honest with me; she’s never lied to me.”

“That’s why you wanted to protect her now.”

“She deserved it.”

Given the serious turn the evening had taken, I didn’t think it appropriate to suggest spending the night together. I’ve always been a little dumb about these things. And anyway, she was leaving for Italy the next day and I wouldn’t see her again. In the end, the feeling you get for somebody you meet one day and instantly traps you, that desire to please them, to protect them, to care for them — it has no future. So... I contemplated her imperfect beauty one last time: the too-straight mouth, the too-large nose, and I thought: she hired me, I’ve done my duty, she paid me well, and that’s the end of the story, with a wonderful meal and a kiss on the lips — the way you always say goodbye to impossible loves.

The next day, Dos Emes came to see me in my office. She was wearing her Mossos d’Esquadra police uniform and had that Colombo face she gets when she’s onto something important.

“It’s just that, it’s what I said, boss, it smelled bad to me. I’ve been investigating and what I’ve found out is quite surprising.”

“Whatever it is, Dos Emes, it’s nonsense. And you watch too much CSI.”

“No, boss, really! There’s stuff here that will make your head spin. The two women are getting married!”

“What two women?”

“The widows... the widow of the murdered lover and the widow of the guy who died on the Ronda. Their names are in the registry, the wedding’s next week. I found out by accident. I had to go to court to check all the files on a forgery case and there it was, their marriage document. Apparently, grief really did bring them together.”

Now it really stunk. This was definitely a puzzle now and the missing pieces were starting to turn up. Dos Emes has a special talent for that.

“Boss, I have a feeling they didn’t become friends after the tragedy but that they were friends before... and much more than friends. In the file there are copies of love letters that the murderer’s widow received. They’re signed with the initials R.M. The assassin’s widow and the friend of the woman you were protecting is named Rosa María. Everything fits. Imagine what it would mean to them if that guy were free. And the dead guy’s cell had a call from an unknown number, from a phone card. My theory is that someone called and asked to meet him and—”

“He had a lot of alcohol in him,” I interrupted. “The most likely scenario is that he slipped and fell.”

“Precisely — with so much alcohol in him, it wouldn’t be at all difficult to give him a little push and help him into the abyss. We’ll also never know if he was hit in the head because the truck that ran him over fractured his skull. What can I tell you? The whole thing bothers me.”

As usual, Dos Emes was right. Everything fit. In fact, the husband had suspected that his wife was cheating on him, and he was correct, but what he couldn’t imagine was that his wife’s lover was not a man but a woman. It must not have been difficult to find the rendezvous place, the little house where the couple used to live. For him, the rest held no mystery: if she was seeing someone, it had to be him, the other man, regardless of the initials on the letters; after all, clandestine lovers need to protect themselves. He went looking for the guy at the bar and blasted two shots straight into his belly. After that, the two women were set free. One dead husband, the other in jail, and a daughter in Florence; there was no obstacle to their relationship except the neighborhood itself: the people and what they’d say. They continued their love affair in secret. But the killer was going to be set free soon. Would he realize his mistake? The best plan was to eliminate him.

“But it wasn’t either of them. They both have alibis and then there’s my testimony.”

“I know,” lamented Dos Emes, and with a hint of cynicism she quickly added: “And, of course, there’s no other suspect.”

I wondered, did Diana Gallard have an alibi? Why did she hire a detective instead of letting the police know about the possible danger to her mother? Had they spoken? Had they planned it together?

“Not that I know of, and anyway, what can I tell you? Nobody’s going to ask questions. Let’s let those two enjoy the last years of their relationship in peace, don’t you think?”

Dos Emes sighed. “You said Diana Gallard returns to Italy this afternoon?”

“That’s what she told me.”

“And you don’t plan to speak with her again?”

“What for?”

She looked at me with that face of hers that says, Boss, I know you, then sighed again. “Well... to find out, for example, if she’s coming back for the wedding, although I’m certain that she won’t. It’s going to be conducted with absolute privacy. You’ll see.”

And, yes, I spoke with her, but only on the phone. I called her on her cell just before she boarded her flight. She was already at the airport. I’d returned to the patio at Catamarán and I was looking out at a serene ocean. I was trying to imagine it when it was more of a dung heap than a beach. I also tried to imagine the lives of those two women during the dictatorship, and in the post-Franco era, and through the transition. A secret kept in the deepest closet until there were no more obstacles. Their lives had changed just like their neighborhood, except that they were forty years too late. To reopen the case, interrogate Diana Gallard, and complete the puzzle would be to reimpose a black-and-white existence on the three of them.

I told her what we’d discovered (well, not me, it was Dos Emes, but I didn’t point that out). I told her the police were considering reopening the case.

“It’s possible they may want to question you,” I added, “but don’t worry — in my statement I mentioned that you were with your mother that night. They’ll probably drop it when they see that.”

“Thanks,” she said in that voice so low you almost couldn’t hear it, like she always did when she was saying something compromising.

Planes were flying low, toward the horizon, en route to the airport. It was easy to imagine tourists and other visitors looking out the windows, contemplating the towers in the Olympic village, the new buildings, the port, the beaches... I wondered how many of those eyes realized that not so long ago, the neighborhood didn’t exist in Technicolor.

In This World, and at the Time Mercedes Died[1] by Lolita Bosch

Sant Gervasi

It wasn’t like this in Barcelona in 1959[2]: on Saturday, September 12[3], the disfigured corpse of “a very well-dressed”[4] man was found in a Mexico City canal. Not far from there, “a radio cable electrocuted a little girl who was playing with her dolls. The little girl, who was one and a half years old, sustained the shock in her neck,” ten thousand kilometers from Barcelona.

Fifty years ago, fifty years from me.

Two decades after Francisco Franco rose against the legitimate republic, won the Spanish Civil War, and imposed a fascist regime that would cover the entire country with a gray darkness that would blur everything.

On Sunday, September 13, 1959, a day before vacation started at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, a Soviet rocket sped to the moon at three thousand kilometers per second. That same day, just as the patriotic celebrations to honor the Child Heroes[5] began, the newspapers proclaimed that there would not be a scarcity of tortillas during the strikes in nearby Mexico City.

The next morning, September 14, 1959, Russia confirmed its rocket landed on the moon, though the United States denied it.[6] Spain sided with the U.S., of course, because in the fascism of our youth, communism was a social cancer. And while the two countries spent the day arguing, with Barcelona’s population unable to listen in on the arguments, a literacy campaign was launched in the Mexican state of Guanajuato and three notices appeared in the papers honoring Mr. Ricardo Ochoa Faist, head of public relations for Gillette Mexico, a European business. Abroad, Indonesia’s attorney general was arrested and accused of being a communist. There were tributes to Simón Bolívar in Caracas, London observed Anti-Nuke Week, and the Brazilian army threatened to expropriate cattle if the meat supply wasn’t reestablished. In Mexico City, America’s soccer team beat Atlante 0 to 1. And in Barcelona, ten thousand kilometers from the Mexican capital, two weeks by boat, fifteen hours by plane including the layovers, forty years of dictatorship, an infinite political distance, Barça scored four goals against Bilbao’s Atlético.

Final score: 4 to 1, much emotion, Catalonian, restrained at the start of the playoffs. A sigh.

A little bit of a breather for Barcelona.

Joy in the transported neighborhood of Sant Gervasi in Mexico City.

On September 15, as Khrushchev[7] was flying to the United States and the world debated the truth regarding the Soviet rocket’s moon landing, international legislation sought to establish rights to the moon to avoid old conflicts, Mexico was celebrating its national holidays, and a two hundred — kilo tusk from some prehistoric animal was discovered in the Olive Valley in Chihuahua.

An intact souvenir from a disappeared world.

Two days after the national holidays[8] and the subsequent hangovers, on September 18, 1959, Khrushchev condemned capitalism “but tasted and enjoyed it,” 1,500 candidates for parliamentary office presented themselves in Great Britain, and typhoon Sara left behind “a wake of death and destruction” on American shores.

Nothing happened in Barcelona because there, or here, the world was turning more and more into a place like any other.

And abroad, in spite of the Republican efforts to take Barcelona and Catalonia in a journey to exile, everything was being transformed.

The world was lying in wait.

And on the following day, September 19, 1959[9], as Khrushchev proposed retiring all the world’s armies in four years and Mexico debuted a new system to light public areas in the capital, Barcelona continued slowly darkening. It was turning into something opaque, hermetic, authoritarian, and fascist that was getting harder to move away from by the minute. It was harder to feel safe. It was more unimaginable to flee, to fly, to escape.

Francoism had been in power twenty years, which is why one Barcelona remained living there and another had left. And this story[10] is about a famous crime in Catalonian high society, abroad. The one in the other Barcelona, in the other Sant Gervasi, so cozy and pleasant, which had needed to escape.

But then, on September 20, 1959[11], in the Mexican newspaper El Universal, a woman named Amalia published her recipes for pastries to accompany tea: marion cookies, nut pastries, almond croissants, and tropical bread. A woman named Amalia published a breath of fresh air in the midst of all that reality and alienation.

A pause. A cookie + a hot sip.

Slurp. Napkin. Thanks.

Just as the press confirmed that field mice were devouring babies in Mexican towns, it also reported that in Santa Cruz de Juventino, Guanajuato, a little girl named Elsa Medina Huerta had died: Elsita.

Amen.

Amen for this world, and for that time in which Mercedes Cassola died; she was born long before Francoism, long before the war, long before the republic, exile, the frozen world in which both of us were born that was what Sant Gervasi had become, and which she took with her ten thousand kilometers away.

Amen for Mercedes Cassola, who had to leave the sunny city in which she was born.

Twice as close to me.

And amen for this world, and for that time in which Mercedes Cassola died so far from home and from how things might have been. Amen at last for Mercedes Cassola, far from History and from the inertia of the Barcelona neighborhood in which she grew up, and in which she lived through the war, and from which she escaped when they locked her in and she realized that she had to leave because she wouldn’t be able to do so later. Everything would turn into Mary Nothing-Going-on-Here Poppins. Instantly, her world would be closed off. Asphyxiating. Claustrophobic. Constantly the same. Repetitive. The environs kept purifying itself until it turned into the placid neighborhood it had been before, and which it wanted to be after the war, and even later: today. A peaceful and quiet neighborhood in which its inhabitants took refuge when Barcelona was under siege. Even though today, again, the wind whistles between streets, parks, balconies, houses, one-story buildings.

I was born in this neighborhood. And these continue to be our streets, our parks, our balconies, our homes, our onestory buildings.

Not so before. Before me, fifty years ago, Sant Gervasi was an immovable place in which those who stayed wanted to believe in the feeling that they were safe. A beautiful Mary Poppins world in which things had only one meaning which defined their context, a world into which I was born eleven years later.

Then 1959 arrived.

That’s when the Cuban Revolution triumphed and the first photos were taken of the dark side of the moon. Then — still 1959 — Francoist forces celebrated twenty years in power, the United Nations declared the Rights of Children, the Inter-American Development Bank was established, and Sukarno[12] installed a dictatorship in Indonesia.

Boris Vian, Camilo Cienfuegos, Buddy Holly, and Lou Costello died.

But Robert Smith, Rigoberta Menchú, Jeanette Winterson, and Evo Morales were born.

In this world, at that time, Mercedes Cassola[13] died far from her home, from her past, and from the simple world that she’d left behind so as not to suffer within it. A world she’d wanted to take with her when she left Sant Gervasi: leaving Barcelona.

This was ten years before the murder of Roman Polanski’s wife in California[14].

In that world, and at that time, things happened this way: On September 13, 1959, Mercedes Cassola was killed in Mexico City in an eminently Republican neighborhood that could have reminded her of her hometown of Juárez in Mexico — “eighteen stab wounds made by a slender knife plunged from the tip to the bottom of the blade.”[15] She lived in a house she owned on Lucerna Street, number 84-A[16], which would have reminded us of a building in her native Sant Gervasi, our Sant Gervasi, a solid and safe neighborhood that managed to be flexible enough to imagine itself in America, flexible enough to imagine itself in Mexico. Far from that broken neighborhood in Barcelona in which Mercedes Cassola got the impression that people were too much alike, more and more so all the time, and a feeling that Francoism was going to bury them up to their necks.

Especially before.

Because before, when Mercedes Cassola was born, before the war, before the dictatorship, and before exile, Sant Gervasi — especially Sant Gervasi — was a kind of “old neighborhood” that in Barcelona is referred to as a barrio-desiempre, a forever kind of place: peaceful streets, families with familiar surnames, similar lives, parks with playgrounds, small hills that are really centuries-old private gardens, low buildings, open skies, guards keeping watch, solid steel fountains, trees. Kids.

A pleasant place. A peaceful world. Safe, pretty.

Time passed the same as always, because it was the only way everyone knew to feel safe. That we knew. Because what’s certain is that we, all of us, aliens in a devastated Barcelona, were a little safer. A little farther away from that city depressed by the impunity of the fascist authorities which surrounded it with big, invisible eyes spying on everyone all the time.

Huge Eyes Watching Everyone.

But not Mercedes Cassola. She was able to leave at the right moment, to flee barefoot until she was found many years later by one of her two servants — María Luisa Monroy — when she went to wake her on the morning of September 14, 1959:

“I awoke at six and went to the mistress’s bedroom. I saw the light was on. I found it odd and thought she’d already gotten up. But when I went in the room, she was stretched out on the bed and covered in blood. I screamed in terror and Amelia came running. I told her I couldn’t look anymore and we went out together. Amelia, who is braver, is the one who found the lifeless bodies.”

Mercedes Cassola had been planning to travel that very day to the United States[17]. Her brother Pompilio[18] had agreed to pick her up at seven p.m. to take her to Benito Juaréz International Airport in Mexico City, although he later told the authorities he had no idea his sister intended to fly with a companion that day.

They didn’t know each other well. They were siblings, but different. Yes, they’d left Barcelona together, but for different reasons. Yes, they both missed the war. But Pompeu went to Mexico because he thought he could continue living his life there exactly the same way he had in Sant Gervasi. As if everything could be the same and he could be safe that way. Mercedes, too, but not in the same way. Mercedes left, not just by lifting her city by a corner and packing it all up, but because she wanted to shake things up. To discover the empty spaces she’d missed. To win back the destiny she’d lost in the war. To build a world. To make plans, with her wings spread over Mexico, feathery and accessorized with bells. To draw Sant Gervasi from the sky and take refuge in it. Yet in America — here, she, it — all was different. More free. That’s why, among the many things strewn across the house on Lucerna Street, there were two passports with American visas and this other information:

The rest was a chaotic and incomprehensible mess, like so many other things: the phone line was cut, “various curiosity seekers managed to get in,” a bag of jewels disappeared during the investigation, ashes were found on the dining room floor, “two open suitcases and all their contents thrown about the floor.” And in the main bedroom — furnished with European wood like their native Barcelona home, although painted in tropical colors typical to Mexico’s south — two lifeless bodies.[20] Far from everything.

María Luisa Monroy and Amelia Martínez Pulido, both twenty years old, had worked for a long time in Mercedes Cassola’s home, and when they discovered the murders, they called a neighbor and then the police. Nobody wanted to touch the dead. Not without permission. Ycilio Massine had forty-seven stab wounds, almost all from the shoulders up, with three on the right arm and another on his belly. Mercedes Cassola was still in her negligee on the bed and had two rings on her fingers which the killer(s) apparently hadn’t been able to remove. That’s how the bodies were when they were transferred to the police department and then to Juaréz Hospital for an autopsy.

The bodies were transferred together.

Supervising the investigation was attorney Ana Virginia Rodríguez Miró[21] and her secretary, Armando Zamora Negrete. Only one suspect could be considered responsible for the murder at 84-A Lucerna Street: the victim’s ex-husband, Felix Herrero Recalde. He was also Catalonian, also from Sant Gervasi, also a resident of Mexico, also far from home.

Also because of a lost war.

He was a man with whom Mercedes Cassola shared origins, codes, wings.

But it was just a theory. And Pompeu Cassola himself rejected it that very morning, after he went to the police when he got to his sister’s house and saw the bodies and the authorities and the two maids and the neighbor who didn’t want to touch anything.

After a few days, Felix Herrera Recalde himself proved the theory wrong, since he had been visiting in Catalonia when Mercedes Cassola was killed and returned to Mexico to make a statement to the police.

He declared he had returned to Mexico of his own accord.

He said he hadn’t killed anybody.

He said he had returned to his native city for the first time with a reentry permit and now had to leave again.

After their separation, Mercedes and Félix had not hated or resented each other, or felt anything close to that. They’d simply divorced ten years before and he’d moved to the port of Veracruz. They both had great fortunes and neither of them had any desire to kill anyone.

They’d both fled from death.

When Mexico opened the door of exile to them, together, Mercedes and Félix made a great deal of money in construction. And though they divorced later, they divided everything equally and remained friends.

Friends who led different lives.

Nothing more.

There was nothing else to it.

And now another pause, but without tea and cookies.

Another pause because the police really don’t have a clue.

Negligence? Desperation? Indifference? Prejudice?

Later, they performed autopsies on the two corpses, together, at Juárez Hospital.

Then Mercedes Cassola’s father went to Mexico to reclaim his daughter’s body[22]. He was a gentleman from Sant Gervasi, who looked like those men who walk their dogs in private parks in the afternoons, who live quietly waiting for the world not to darken completely all of a sudden, for the Mary Poppins Time to turn into a burst of light, to turn silent again, to turn away again from this absolute fear that anything can happen. He was a man who never managed to distinguish with any exactitude the Sant Gervasi that stayed behind from the Sant Gervasi that left, and which the government had allowed him to visit with a special permit so he could retrieve his daughter. Mercedes Cassola’s father arrived in Mexico City a confused stranger, and waited for the autopsy report with the patience of a man who’d lost a war. Later, he sent his daughter home in a sealed coffin and buried her in the cemetery in her native city, our native city. The real neighborhood.

This was eleven years before me.

The discreet funeral consigned Mercedes Cassola to the orchard, the forest, the world, the garden from which it was a scandal to escape without seeming different.

The dead woman returned in silence: she was already home.

No obituary in her hometown paper, in our hometown paper. Not a word about Mercedes Cassola’s death in America, nor in Barcelona. The daughter of the Cassolas died far away because she had business there with her husband; she was buried in Sant Gervasi because that was the place where she grew up, where she lived, and from which — in spite of the flexible wings with which she wanted to fly to Mexico with, taking her city with her, folded up and held by a corner — she couldn’t leave. She couldn’t escape from it.

And, now everything stops. Just like that, without a pause.

So that in spite of the time, this story, and her colorful wings, feathers, and bells, Mercedes Cassola ended up inheriting a tainted city, a wounded city, that same old neighborhood.

Alone.

this is enough to judge these two unsolved crimes, you’re obviously within your right to do so. But as the narrator, I’d suggest that Pompeu’s pain not be forgotten. And that stories without contradictions are incomplete.

There’s practically nothing to add. The autopsy performed the morning after the murder — when they were finally able to get the two rings off Mercedes Cassola’s right hand so they could give them to her father — only yielded two facts:

1) There were two different weapons used in the killings, of different sizes, and Mercedes died after she was knocked out. But not Ycilio Massine, no. That robust young man, the Michoacán-born son of Italians, fought for his life.

2) There were no signs of forced entry in the house.

But Mercedes didn’t appear to have any enemies in the family.

That’s when, empty-handed, the police and the press visited El Frontón México[23]. In search of a social explanation to take care of everything. It was a place where people went to have fun, where there were few prejudices, and where Mercedes Cassola, finally, looked like a fish floating in the stagnant lake that’s hidden under Mexico City.

And even so, in that place taken advantage of by everyone: nothing. And in spite of the raids, the back-and-forth accusations, and the different connections published in the press every day, the crime committed against Mercedes Cassola and Ycilio Massine was eventually filed away for lack of evidence. Nothing came from the chauffeur named Clemente, who’d driven the couple from El Frontón to Lucerna Street the night of September 13, 1959, nor the young men of Italian lineage detained by the police in various raids, nor Mercedes’s former lovers who might have been angry over losing the money and freedom that Mercedes had given them. Nothing.

The tips they got after the murders were useless.

And this is how occupied-Barcelona and that Mexico of another time tried to forget the 1959 crime. They buried it. Nonetheless, what happened at 84-A Lucerna Street had a deep impact on Mexican society, while the Francoist steel curtain was able to keep the story out of the press.

Now drawn to new headlines in the newspapers[24], the sad and violent deaths of the two lovers slowly disappeared from the public’s attention.

Soon after, the bodies had already been separated.

Both were far from home.

A last pause: a minute of silence for the dead.

So, after all that, there was practically nothing. Later, later meaning now, later, after the bodies were no more, after I was born in Sant Gervasi and traveled to Mexico, after Francoism, dictatorship, exile, and those huge scissors which can cut off colorful wings with bells and feathers, the 1959 double homicide was revisited in three texts[25] (four counting this one)[26], and the Mexican writer Carlos Monsiváis turned it into one of those standard tales in the fight against homophobia in Mexico, a Let’s-Not-Forget-How-Things-Really-Are-Here.

It started because Güero Tellez, the Mexican investigative reporter, said, “This type of crime, as we all know, is characteristic among homosexuals, whose passions are infinitely more robust than other people.”[27] He concluded, “The answer might be the following: the killer’s body type probably resembled Massine’s, and he was prepared, with a different knife in each hand, so that it was probably easy for him to overpower Mercedes Cassola and her lover.”

Everything was left like this: in the hate felt by a powerful and oblique homosexual octopus that extended its tentacles with a knife in each fist. An inhuman apparition that, in the final act, cuts up the bodies and writes something on the walls.[28]

Like what happened, years later, to Sharon Tate[29].

Unfortunately, the death of the lovers on Lucerna Street, Pompeu’s exile, and the victim’s father’s patience, like a man who’d lost a war, were transformed into Let’s-Not-Forget-How-Things-Really-Are-Here so that we could talk about the Big World Mercedes Cassola grew up in back in Barcelona. In Sant Gervasi.

She took the city with her, flying.

Amen for Mercedes Cassola.

Amen for Ycilio Massine.

And amen for us too, because we don’t really understand what infuriated the killer(s), why the victims were judged so harshly by the authorities and the press, the pain of trying to dig out the truth that the parents of the victims had to deal with in that neighborhood where families all know each other, as was the case in Sant Gervasi, there in the heart of Barcelona. Amen because we don’t know what Charles Manson’s “family” was based on but we can follow the clues to the crime[30]. Until now. Until now, because we — those of us who are here — now know that Charles Manson was judged because of his philosophy, and that the crime committed against Mercedes Cassola and Ycilio Massine was, in turn, almost buried by prejudice.

Two prejudices: one in Mexico, the other in Barcelona.

So Mercedes Cassola lost twice.

As Carlos Monsiváis tells it, the case had so much resonance because of “the unique circumstance of a woman from Catalonian high society who lived as she pleased” during Francoist times. And so: reporters, agents, elected officials, and detectives all agreed — the victims deserved what they got. And so: amidst the thousands of murders of gay people, the public only remembers the case of this fruit fly[31] and her bisexual lover, the story told in lurid detail.”[32]

This is what the Francoist authorities would have said:

Why did she leave? She would have been safe here.

That was in 1959.

Mercedes Cassola dared to flee from the Sant Gervasi in which I was born eleven years later. In time, I too went to Mexico and then returned and wrote this story and understood that, unfortunately, time is implacable; I can’t say any more.

(Silence.)

Time doesn’t make the world a different place.

That’s why I searched the Barcelona telephone directory for some relative of Mercedes Cassola’s whose tale might make it possible for me to finish this narrative[33] in a gentler fashion: bringing flowers to the dead, writing that I did in fact return. I realized that the crime against Mercedes and Ycilio can only be summarized like this: impunity, history, judgment, homophobia, freedom, fascism.

I look for Mercedes Cassola in Barcelona so I can take her away. Again, as if she were flying. I want to take her with me back to Mexico and hang her wings on the dead who we do remember.

The dead who did in fact receive pity.

But there’s nothing, even though I did manage to find some Cassolas[34] in the city of Barcelona. And even though I visited their home in Sant Gervasi, I haven’t come across anything, yet I’ve seen everything: and everything was practically the same. The same quiet place in which I grew up, in which she grew up. And when I stood there, in front of the Past, I didn’t dare knock on the door to ask about a killing that took place more than forty years ago.

That’s why I haven’t said or written anything.

I returned home, where I went on the Internet to send this story exactly as it is[35]. Without a clear understanding of whether I had managed to open any locks to a spiraling world able to absorb everything. Without a sense of whether I had reached the exact point where the dead rest in This World and At That Time when Mercedes Cassola and Ycilio Massine died[36]. And thinking, in my heart of secret gardens, that the world is like that sometimes, and that it stays that way in small spaces. There’s nothing I can do about it.

And as I understand it, more or less, this continues to be a world without me.

Without any of us.